Earlier this year, MIT Centre for Future Skills Excellence (MIT-FuSE), the flagship online programme of India’s MIT Art, Design and Technology University designed to offer training programs in Future Exponential Technologies, launched the Postgraduate Diploma in ERP. The exclusive program in partnership with SAP and India’s leading authorised SAP Education Partner Atos aims to provide students with in-depth knowledge and understanding of ERP, business processes, and Software Engineering with specialisation in SAP. 

On the 8th of July, the first cohort of student aspirants and working professionals to undertake the specialised PG Diploma Programme in ERP were launched during a virtual induction programme attended by distinguished leaders from SAP, Atos India, and MIT-ADT University. Participants of the programme will immerse themselves in mentorships, global SAP certification, practical hands-on, industry internships, and capstone projects spanning 50 weeks and three trimesters.

Sharing some details of the postgraduate programme, Prof. Dr. Mangesh Karad, Executive President & Vice-Chancellor MIT ADT University said:

“The university has identified the emerging technology frontiers such as AI & ML, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Blockchain, IoT, Digital Supply Chain, Procurement & Networks for aspirants and the curriculum has been integrated with relevant project-based learning to build future India.” 

He highlighted that the programme will enable students to further career advancement by having comprehensive knowledge on SAP S/4HANA that is best suited for Industry 4.0.

MIT-FuSE, MIT-ADT’s SAP Software Training

MIT- ADT University is one of the leading government recognised private universities under the umbrella of MIT (Maharashtra Institute of Technology) Group, which is known for engineering, technology, and management programmes. With the launch of MIT-FuSE in February, MIT-ADT intends to support the growing need for students and professionals to acquire technical knowledge to keep pace with fast-evolving the digital economy.

PG Diploma in ERP is one of the online programmes that MIT-FuSE offers, making education accessible during COVID-19 times. The ERP course is intended for new and working professionals who aspire for career advancement in the field of ERP as a Techno-Functional Consultant. Today, more than ever, the global pandemic has revealed how a unified solution such as ERP software can be critical to an organisation’s survival and success. Designed to automate and streamline key business functions of an organisation, ERP delivers remarkable efficiency and productivity.  

MIT-FuSE’s programme in ERP will provide participants in-depth knowledge, skills, and experience on ERP systems, specifically the SAP system, as well as allow them to delve into the importance of an organisation’s advanced information systems in increasing efficiency and achieving better outcomes. The programme will also touch on SAP S/4HANA, a market-leading Intelligent ERP that runs in-memory, allowing for faster, near to real-time analytics and compute capabilities.

As the market leader in ERP software, SAP has been helping companies run better and become intelligent enterprises with innovations and technologies that harness the power of machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics. The German software enterprise offers an end-to-end suite of applications and services and a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders. Moreover, 77{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system.

Explaining about MIT-FuSE’s PG Diploma programmes and short-term certifications relevant to today’s global skill-based job demands, Prof. Suraj Bhoyar, Project Director stated:

“It’s a fantastic chance to experience blended learning with practical hands-on while also laying the foundation for attracting the best talent in the country to engage in these programmes. It’s crucial to remember that only those that put in the time and effort to upskill and improve their existing abilities will be successful in the future.”

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be awarded a Diploma in ERP and can take the SAP certification exam and qualify as SAP Associate Consultant.

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In this report, you’ll learn:

• The information, analytics and enabling technology capabilities of AP top performers
• The skills, training and automation technology that best enable workers at top-performing companies
• How top performing companies use technology to enable organization and governance, service partnering and service design
• A checklist of service delivery objectives for maturing as an AP organization

Approaching the future with flexibility and maintaining a competitive edge requires a comprehensive approach to AP-focused P2P automation. Use this report to develop your future-proof strategy.

Not what you were looking for? Try The Outperformer’s Guide to Total Financial Process Domination!

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Seidor, an SAP consulting partner and systems integrator, has been named to be the technology partner of BASF, a German chemical company and one of the leading global chemical producers, for the corporate-restructuring project of its construction chemicals business unit.

BASF has decided to push through with its restructuring project after SAP’s announcement that the support for SAP R/3 will only be until 2025. The global chemical company has been running SAP R/3 COBALT for the past 12 years and the deployment project is its means of futureproofing the system. BASF will separate the unit’s technology systems to prepare it to run independently, as a stand-alone entity. 

Specifically, Seidor MENA, Seidor’s Dubai-based entity, was selected by BASF stakeholders to be its partner not only for its outstanding technology credentials but also for its global reach. Seidor MENA is a leading multinational Spanish company and an SAP Platinum Partner providing services across 30 countries with over 35 years of industry experience in SAP services.

The deployment project covers 22 countries across the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and South America affecting 280 users and is anticipated to be completed within a tight time frame. 

Jose Vizoso Capiali, Regional IT Manager Middle East, West Asia, CIS, Africa at BASF shared the rationale behind choosing Seidor:

“It was vital for us to move our small and medium-sized operations within the construction chemicals division to a robust system that offers high flexibility.”

“The fact that Seidor MENA was also able to offer us technology advices and fast deployment, with the added benefit of having a global presence, were key deciding factors. We were very keen to adopt a solution that was easy to maintain. In the digital age, IT decision-makers are always looking for ways to reduce in-house workload, so the AWS cloud model suggested by Seidor MENA was a great match. And Seidor MENA’s own expertise in the domain of ERP in general, and SAP in particular, will also be invaluable to us throughout the business transformation project,” he added.

A Peek at the Project

As an initial step, Seidor MENA helped BASF classify countries by the size of operations. Then, Seidor MENA as an SAP partner advised the IT team of BASF on the best business application fit for the company’s transformation needs. The regional systems integrator also gave recommendations on the best implementation approach in transitioning from the legacy R/3 system that they’ve been using for over a decade. Consequently, BASF has selected to deploy a mixture of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business One ERP running on Amazon Web Services. 

Seidor MENA will manage the entire implementation for the 22 countries from its Dubai offices. Planned in phased rollouts throughout the year, the first implementation was last February. The consultancy firm will also support BASF in the change-management process. Seidor MENA is expected to help BASF’s new business unit transition from an enterprise system with a high degree of automation to a leaner solution built for small and medium enterprises.

Seidor MENA has designed a global template for the consolidation of business processes to be utilised by the BASF project team. To lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for BASF, a standardised implementation for subsequent waves will be made after findings from the initial rollouts are released. This template will be updated as needed over the course of three years.

To ensure successful implementation and boost users’ confidence in the new solution, Seidor MENA will engage heavily with end-users in the pilot countries the entire three years duration of the project. BASF’s partnership with Seidor MENA acting also as its consultant in business-process standardisation extends from supporting the ERP deployment up to exploring options in the procurement of other business applications and cloud services.

Ignacio Ruiz de Eguilaz, Managing Director at Seidor MENA stated that successful digital transformation is not just about technology migration. He stressed:

“At Seidor, we recognise that business transformation requires organisations to evolve and make changes to company culture. Our global reach and technology expertise now complement a deep, nuanced knowledge of business-process standardisation. BASF faced a daunting transformation challenge with their construction chemicals division, but recognised that Seidor was their ideal partner because we take a business-first approach to everything we do.”

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BlackLine’s founder and CEO Therese Tucker opened the conference with her presentation, “Trust is in the Balance.” Tucker took us through the changing expectations on CEOs and CFOs. The CEO’s primary role now is to drive trust, whereas the CFO is being pulled between managing risk and driving strategy. She asks, “can we solve real business problems with technology?” According to Tucker:

“Digital transformation must be top of mind. It’s the only way out of a difficult situation.”

Joon Ar Chiang of EY conducted three live polls of the audience, revealing concerns over increasingly complicated systems and diminishing skilled workers are top of mind for in-house accountants. According to Chiang, finance needs to become forward-looking instead of reactive. Building digital know-how will become critical. He tells us:

“The transformation age demands agility… predictive and data driven approaches will be the future.”

EY’s Doris Cheng followed up to give us a prediction of the future for finance personnel, that new jobs and skills will be required. With an increase in robotics-driven finance, industrial data scientists, RPA engineers and AI auditors will be required. Businesses will require a strong ability to change.

SAP and Finance

For InsideSAP Asia, the highlight was a presentation by Richard McLean, CFO of SAP Asia Pacific / Japan. In the first time this talk was presented, McLean announced that SAP has kicked off another wave of finance transformation. With new intelligent technology, repetitive processes can now be automated, enabling finance to take a more strategic role in business. This will be achieved through

• Process automation
• Dynamic analytics
• Next-gen UX

McLean revealed that SAP’s strategy is to deliver the intelligent enterprise. S/4HANA ERP allows all operational and analytical data to be held in one place, giving businesses agility, analytics, assurance and paving the way for automation. He explained why cloud is the best choice for ERP, allowing for:

• Flexibility, granting SMEs access to the same computing power and tech of much larger companies
• Support standardization, in reference to the record-breaking deployment by NZ company Kapura
• Agility and Scalability

Cloud ERP levels the playing field. Through the intelligent enterprise, SAP is creating a culture that encourages people to explore design thinking. To fail quickly, learn quickly and continue experimenting. Finance, he tells us, should become agile collaborators and co-innovators. He said:

“Stop over thinking agility and get on with it.”

There were many more presentations and amazing speakers, including some excellent breakdowns by BlackLine product specialists of RPA and technology that will affect the industry. The key takeaways for InsideSAP Asia were that finance must be empowered to decrease the reactive workload, whilst still increasing productivity. Doing so with the help of technology will enable finance to take on more innovative roles in business.

Overall, digital transformation allows mundane work to be replaced with high value work. This leads to further agility, further transformation and innovation.

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First deployed in the 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have become an integral part of modern business. Now, with many ERP systems reaching end-of-life, the challenge of efficiently replacing them is becoming apparent.

Because they sit at the heart of operations, any changes to ERP systems can have knock-on effects across a business. Careful planning and a detailed migration plan are therefore required to ensure any replacement project can succeed.

One of the most important groups to involve in this planning process is the accounting department. The accounting team has become heavily reliant on ERP and any plans for an upgrade should only be made after close consultation with them.

Unfortunately, however, accounting often does not take a seat at the planning table. This is usually because the team is already fully committed with the day-to-day activity associated with keeping the organisation running.

There are four key steps that can help an organisation overcome this challenge:

1. Automate processes: To have the best chance of completing a successful ERP upgrade, it’s vital to involve the accounting team from the outset. The best way to achieve this is through the automation of work associated with activities such as transactional reconciliations and close management. Experience shows the month-end process can be reduced by up to 70 per cent through automation, greatly freeing staff to work on other things such as an ERP upgrade.
2. Make use of the free time: Once workflows within the accounting department have been automated. Accountants, who are often the heaviest users of the ERP system and most knowledgeable about pitfalls, process and structure improvement opportunities, are the ones who can reap the most significant time reallocation. Many find themselves with up to 50 per cent more time that can be allocated to the ERP project. After the upgrade has been completed, they will then be able to allocate this time to activities such as business partnering, analytics, and further automating the financial close.
3. Extract value from the new ERP platform: Accounting teams often don’t have the time or are reticent to make substantive changes in their new ERP platform to take advantage of the latest features and capabilities that it offers. There tends to be a concern that doing so would increase risk and there is little free time to test thoroughly. They also worry about ending up being stuck with having to reconcile new and old data, or missing a vital step in their new close process. Instead, they port over legacy structures, old approval workflows, manual processes and cryptic naming to the brand-new environment. This can be likened to an old car’s engine into a new car body.
4. Continually reduce risk: Most accounting departments face enhanced financial close and reporting risk during the period of a substantial ERP upgrade. These stem from factors such as an unfamiliar user experience, altered approval workflows, immature integrations, old and new ERP data and structures, and having a new engine for processing billables.
   It’s important to have in place tools and processes that reduce or remove this risk. The tools should provide preventative controls, continuous monitoring of accounts, and transactions, and controlled policy management. In such a preventative environment, a significantly higher population of automatic controls take place in real-time at the front end of the process as opposed to on the back end.
   To ensuring nothing falls through the cracks from a policy perspective, there has to be a single environment to manage and approve close tasks, from corporate to entities, together with centralised policies and procedures. Moreover, there should be a direct connection to the underlying activities that need to perform whether on a daily, monthly, or quarterly basis.

By taking this approach, an organisation can ensure the deployment of a new ERP platform does not have a detrimental impact on ongoing administrative functions. Freed from a proportion of its workload, the accounting department can be closely involved in the process, which will ensure a tight fit with business processes.

Rather than being seen as a potential nightmare, a new ERP deployment can be positioned as a tactical step forward that will support the organisation in the years to come.

Terry Smagh is senior vice president APAC at financial automation software provider, BlackLine. This article is sponsored by BlackLine.

The post How to remove the pain of an ERP upgrade appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

The two companies were formerly known as Merck Pvt Ltd and Merck Specialties Pvt Ltd.

During the project, for which the companies have partnered with Abacus Consulting, a number of SAP modules will be implemented, including financial accounting, controlling, sales distribution, materials management, production planning, plant maintenance, customer service and quality management.

Following the implementation, both companies expect to be able to operate their businesses in real time and with more integration across departments.

“We at Martin Dow Marker strongly believe in adapting and keeping up with new market trends. We hope that with the implementation of SAP S/4HANA, we continue to strengthen our business model and maintain our position as one of the leading companies in the pharmaceutical sector,” said Anis A. Shah, managing director and CEO, Martin Dow Marker.

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As part of its commitment to KONE and other clients in the region, as well as to consolidate its presence in the market, Infosys will also establish its first design and innovation centre in Helsinki. The design centre, which will provide end-to-end technology, consulting, and systems integration services, will house a design thinking and innovation lab that is expected to provide disruptive tools and technologies for Infosys customers across the region.

“Digitalising our business has been a strategic imperative for KONE globally and developing our IT function is an integral part of this business transformation,” said Antti Koskelin, senior vice president and CIO, KONE.

Following the successful transition from their previous provider to Infosys, Koskelin said that KONE is “very impressed with Infosys team’s focus and commitment to delivering ‘best-in-class’ services across all our global hubs.”

Looking forward to a partnership that helps KONE achieve their goals over the next several years, Koskelin said, “We were looking for a partner with proven expertise in SAP landscape operations and implementation to enable us to do more.”

Nitesh Banga, senior vice president and global head of manufacturing, Infosys credits his company’s people plus software approach in addition to its design thinking and innovative ‘zero distance’ program with enabling KONE’s ERP service delivery and landscape.

With zero distance, Infosys’ massive workforce of more than 190,000 people worldwide seeks to maintain their entrepreneurial edge by ensuring that every team member is psychologically at ‘zero distance’ from the underlying technology and from the end user, whether working side by side or across the globe.

“Our transformation and service improvement roadmap will reduce systems related disruptions to KONE’s global businesses, achieve a cost reset, and finally, embark on a simplification and modernisation journey to future-proof KONE’s IT investments in the ERP space,” said Banga.

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Already being used in production by 80 global customers, the cloud-based Panaya Test Center covers the entire functional testing spectrum, including unit testing, system integration testing, regression testing and user acceptance testing.

According to Panaya, the solution provides organisations with the ability to perform all testing activities faster, for both functional experts and business users, reducing overall testing expenses by 30 per cent.

“Our end-to-end platform staunches the haemorrhage of time and money previously wasted on manual approaches,” said Doron Gerstel, CEO, Panaya. “The cloud-based technology means they don’t have to install anything and can hit the ground running. The recent wave of customer replacing traditional testing tools such as HPQC is evidence to its true value.”

The platform has also received the stamp of approval from analyst firm 451 Research, which said in a research report that the Panaya Test Center is a leading solution for “postmodern ERP testing”.

“Papaya’s software compliments SAP’s own test workbench by marking it even easier for nontechnical users to create and document their own test scripts, which is to be welcomed as companies look to digitally transform their processes, putting end users at the centre of agile application change,” wrote Katy Ring, research director of IT services, 451 Group.

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Since 2010, NEC has been introducing standardised business processes for sales, accounting and purchasing by rolling out an SAP ERP core system to NEC Group companies.

The company, however, has now decided to apply standardised business processes to NEC Group companies that have not yet introduced the core system by deploying a two-tier ERP model, with Business ByDesign to be implemented at its subsidiaries.

According to NEC, the initiative will strengthen its corporate governance through improved transparency of management information and expediting account settlement, and will support local management and real-time business analysis for each company. Using ByDesign, as a cloud solution, will also enable NEC to respond to changes in a variety of business environments, such as legal systems, commercial practices, new entries, and merger and acquisition activity.

“SAP welcomes NEC’s initiatives to further strengthen its own global management platform by deploying SAP Business ByDesign in addition to modernising its SAP ERP solution on SAP HANA. The two-tier ERP approach using SAP products makes it possible to integrate information of both the company’s head office and its overseas subsidiaries, helping to improve not only management transparency but also speed of management information exchange,” said Michael Schmitt, senior vice president and general manager, SAP Business ByDesign.

“NEC has been engaged with SAP for many years, and I look forward to working together to contribute to further innovation for our customers in the future.”

In December last year, NEC launched its HANA Migration Service for customers, based on the knowledge developed through its own SAP HANA migration for its core system for sales, accounting and purchasing.

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Professor Pradipta Banerji, director, IITR, said, “It has been a constant endeavour at IIT Roorkee to manage change in our processes and systems and to ensure that they are user friendly and transparent. The Digital ERP Solution provided from Atos India would benefit in integrating our campuses spread across Roorkee, Saharanpur and Greater Noida.”

The system will cover mapping of assets, their lifecycle, data analytics on budgeting and financial forecasting, data uniformity and integrity across various business units, digitisation of assets enabling a paperless work culture, assistance with real-time decision support mechanisms, and automation of management controls and approval systems.

“IITR has decided to implement a combination of the best-in-breed ERP solution that suits all our institute’s needs – for example, we can track a student from admission to being an alumni and track his movement in the future after leaving the institute too. It would help integrate hostel functions and academics of every student. It will also track a faculty member from the application process to post-retirement phase. This will ensure a seamless integration of all entities across IITR and its campuses,” Banerji said.

IITR expects the benefit of having a common integrated system across different functions and processes to include  standardisation of all processes and systems across the institute, enhanced monitoring of R&D activities, and optimum utilisation of the resources, procurement and administrative processes.

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